Business Partners Support MicroStrategy’s Latest Software Release

McLean, VA (March 26, 2009) –

MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the release of MicroStrategy 9(TM), the company’s most significant software release in nearly a decade. MicroStrategy 9 was introduced in January 2009 at the Company’s annual user conference and was made generally available on March 20, 2009.

MicroStrategy 9 delivers new technology and features to:

* Extend the performance, scalability, and efficiency of enterprise BI;
* Enable the rapid deployment of departmental BI applications; and
* Provide a seamless consolidation path from departmental BI to enterprise BI.

Extending Enterprise BI
As BI systems grow to thousands of users and hundreds of terabytes of data, maintaining fast query performance can be a tremendous challenge. MicroStrategy 9 includes new adaptive caching technology called In-memory ROLAP, which takes advantage of the large addressable memory now available on 64-bit Unix, Linux, and Windows computer servers, and provides a performance-optimized middle-tier database that can respond directly to data requests from reports, dashboards, and OLAP analyses. MicroStrategy 9 also introduces new SQL generation optimizations that can greatly improve performance for sophisticated queries involving complex metrics.

As companies merge and expand, there is an increased urgency for business intelligence to span all operations, across business units, across departments, and across the globe. This expansion introduces new requirements on BI systems to support global deployments. MicroStrategy 9 offers the ability to present reports, dashboards, or OLAP analyses in the local language of business users viewing the information. In addition, MicroStrategy 9 offers numerous capabilities to streamline coordination between development teams working around the globe on the same BI applications.

Enabling Rapid Development and Deployment of Departmental BI
MicroStrategy 9 includes significant new architectural components and features designed specifically to support the needs of smaller-scale BI systems for departments. MicroStrategy 9 enables departmental BI applications to be set up quickly, providing end users with the ability to create reports and dashboards, and to distribute information among themselves with little or no IT support.

MicroStrategy’s new Multi-source ROLAP, In-memory ROLAP, and rapid metadata creation enables business departments to quickly set up small BI environments, accessing multiple databases without the time-consuming and technically-intensive work of first creating a data mart or data warehouse.

MicroStrategy 9 offers numerous new features that make assembling reports simpler and faster. Business users can quickly create their own dashboards using new features in MicroStrategy 9, including out-of-the-box dashboard templates, support for custom-designed templates, and new design assistants that aid novice users in creating their own dashboards.

Because of its ROLAP architecture, one of MicroStrategy’s long-standing strengths is the ability of business users to freely investigate the data or ‘surf’ through the data warehouse without having to design a new report for each new combination of data they want to see. MicroStrategy 9 has extended this ability by allowing users to perform these same OLAP manipulations such as pivoting and drilling directly on graphs.

MicroStrategy 9 gives users greater control of report and dashboard distribution with its new Distribution Services product. Users can set up report distributions for themselves or for other users, sending reports via e-mail, networked printers, or directly to recipients’ computers or servers. Business users are empowered to create and manage their own information subscriptions, without the intervention of a centralized IT administrator.

Providing Seamless Consolidation from Departmental BI to Enterprise BI
Organizations often have a mix of departmental and enterprise BI systems, and face the problem of having multiple ‘versions of the truth’ across these BI islands that can undermine the credibility of its BI systems. A solution to this problem is to merge the islands of BI into a more cohesive, enterprise-wide BI system gradually and incrementally.

MicroStrategy 9 was designed to enable the easy merger of independent islands of MicroStrategy BI into a more expansive enterprise BI system. Using the new Multi-source ROLAP capability, metadata and reports from departmental BI islands can be gradually merged into larger enterprise BI metadata, without also having to move any of the original data into data warehouses or data marts. As a next step, MicroStrategy 9 also enables companies to gradually move their data from disparate databases into the data warehouse simply by ‘re-pointing’ the metadata to access the same data, but at its new location, with no disruption to reports or redesign required.

MicroStrategy Business Partners Support MicroStrategy 9
MicroStrategy works with a broad range of business partners, including technology partners, consulting partners, systems integrators, resellers, and OEMs. Many of these business partners have previewed MicroStrategy 9 beta software and provided positive feedback on its new features and enhancements.

“The innovations in MicroStrategy 9 will enable our business partners to attract new customers looking for a BI platform that extends performance and scalability at the enterprise-level and is easy to deploy for smaller BI applications,” said MicroStrategy’s COO, Sanju Bansal. “We are delighted that MicroStrategy 9 has been well received by our business partners.”

Fujitsu Consulting
“MicroStrategy 9 supports our view of BI as a strategic enterprise asset, which is central to our approach to driving real and measurable change in the organization through the deployment of BI and Performance Management solutions,” said Norm Mackay, VP Business Intelligence, Fujitsu Consulting. “By leveraging this enterprise-caliber BI technology for departmental BI requirements, Fujitsu enables our clients to consolidate all their departmental applications into a single, integrated BI system. This truly represents a technological breakthrough that will allow our clients to maximize the returns on their BI investment.”

Harris Corporation
“MicroStrategy 9 is a huge jump from previous releases,” said Peter Wickwire, Product Manager, Broadcast Communications Division Report Services, Harris Corporation. “The features in MicroStrategy 9 will allow us to deliver the best business intelligence implementation possible to our very demanding clients.”

HP
“Customers want the ability to respond to business events faster with current and relevant information,” said Giuliano Di Vitantonio, director, marketing and alliances, Business Intelligence Solutions, HP. “The combination of HP platform and services and MicroStrategy software gives customers an integrated solution that supports and improves the decision making process with greater scalability, performance, and efficiency.”

Informatica
“MicroStrategy 9 sets a new standard for reporting and analysis for the enterprise as well as for departmental implementations,” said Don Tirsell, Senior Director Technical Alliances, Informatica. “The redesigned interfaces and many new self-service features of MicroStrategy 9 make information easily available to all levels of users across the organization.”

Marketing Direct
“The enhancements in MicroStrategy 9 are very exciting and will deliver instant value to our customer base,” said Chad Wainscott, Business Intelligence Analyst, Marketing Direct. “The features such as multi-source data access, personal prompt answers, and In-memory ROLAP address several of the demands from our user community. These enhancements will make all of our users more efficient and productive.”

Sybase
“MicroStrategy 9 sets a new standard for reporting and analysis decision-making when used in tandem with the Sybase® IQ Analytic Server,” said Dan Lahl, Director of Analytics at Sybase. “Using completely redesigned interfaces, hundreds of new features and optimizations for Sybase IQ 15, MicroStrategy 9 and Sybase IQ 15 quickly turn raw data into decision-ready information for all business owners throughout the enterprise.”

Teradata Corporation
“As a business intelligence Partner, MicroStrategy ensures that their business intelligence software easily integrates with all members of the Teradata Purpose-Built Platform family to leverage the data within our customers’ data warehouses,” said Randy Lea, vice president, products and services, Teradata Corporation. “MicroStrategy 9 will extend and improve the ability of our joint customers to make better, faster decisions by infusing real-time intelligence into frontline operations and long-range strategic planning.”

For more information on MicroStrategy 9, visit www.microstrategy.com/9info.

About MicroStrategy
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a global leader in business intelligence (BI) technology. MicroStrategy provides integrated reporting, analysis, and monitoring software that helps leading organizations worldwide make better business decisions every day. Companies choose MicroStrategy for its advanced technical capabilities, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability. More information about MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is available at www.microstrategy.com.

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy 9 are either trademarks or registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated in the United States and certain other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Wende Cover
MicroStrategy, Incorporated
1-703-770-1646
wcover@microstrategy.com

Source: MicroStrategy